Iraqi forces seized a key military base, an airport and an oil field from Kurdish fighters on Monday in disputed Kirkuk Province in a major operation sparked by a controversial independence referendum.

The rapid advance, which follows weeks of soaring tensions between two U.S. allies in the battle against the Islamic State (IS) group, aims to retake oil and military sites that Kurdish forces took over during the fightback against the jihadists.

The U.S.-led coalition against IS urged the two sides to “avoid escalatory actions” and to focus on fighting the extremists, who are on the verge of losing their last strongholds in Iraq.

Thousands of residents were seen fleeing Kurdish districts of Kirkuk city. At the same time, crowds on the streets of Kirkuk’s southern outskirts welcomed Iraqi forces as they entered the city. Iraqi and Kurdish peshmerga forces exchanged artillery fire early on Monday south of the capital of the oil-rich Province, after the launch of the operation on Sunday night.

A Kurdish health official said at least 10 peshmerga fighters were killed and 27 wounded during fighting overnight, but there was no confirmation of the toll from the Kurdish government.

The rapid progress of Iraqi forces suggested that Kurdish fighters were withdrawing with little or no resistance in many areas.

Iraq’s Joint Operations Command said its forces had retaken the K1 military base northwest of Kirkuk, the military airport east of the city and the Baba Gargar oil field, one of six in the disputed region.

BAGHDAD: The Iraqi army and allied Shiite-dominated paramilitary troops were on alert to raid Kurdish peshmerga forces in the disputed city of Kirkuk early on Monday after talks failed and a 48-hour deadline passed for the Kurds to withdraw.

“We have reached a dead end. This means we are going to fight,” a senior federal military officer told Arab News.
“The Kurds insist on pushing us to use force as they keep rejecting all constitutional and legal solutions, and want to impose reality by force. OK, we are ready.”

Iraqi troops in southern and western Kirkuk are likely to raid the city and its suburbs in the early hours of Monday, and await orders from their commander-in-chief, Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi, military sources told Arab News.

“As part of the federal security forces, we are in full readiness to implement the orders issued by the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces,” said Ahmed Assadi, spokesman for Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Unit). “We are soldiers; we will carry out the orders issued by him without discussion.”

Earlier, Baghdad said the presence in Kirkuk of fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the outlawed Turkish militant group, was “a serious escalation that cannot be tolerated” and “represents a declaration of war.” The Kurdish peshmerga ministry in Irbil denied that any PKK fighters were in Kirkuk.

The crisis erupted last month when Kurds in northern Iraq voted overwhelmingly for independence in a referendum condemned by Baghdad as illegal and unconstitutional.

The federal government banned international flights into and out of the Kurdistan Region, halted financial transactions, ordered repairs to the crucial oil pipeline linking Kirkuk to Ceyhan in Turkey to bypass Kurdistan, and asked Turkey and Iran to stop all trade with the region and shut down land border crossings. Iran closed its border with Iraqi Kurdistan on Sunday.

Kurdish forces have controlled Kirkuk and its lucrative oil fields since June 2014, when the Iraqi army fled in the face of an onslaught by Daesh militants on nearby cities and towns. On Friday, Baghdad gave the Kurds 48 hours to withdraw.

A meeting in Irbil on Sunday between the Iraqi President Fuad Masum, who is Kurdish, the Iraqi Kurdistan President Massoud Barazani and leaders of the two biggest Kurdish political parties, the Democratic Party of Kurdistan (DPK) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), failed to resolve the military standoff in Kirkuk.

Kurdish leaders who took part in the meeting said they rejected Baghdad’s demand that the referendum be annulled as a condition for talks. They insisted on unconditional negotiations under international supervision, and said military threats from Baghdad were unconstitutional.

Federal sources contacted by Arab News said high-level political and security meetings were taking place in Baghdad to discuss the next step.

Control of Kirkuk is vital for the Iraqi Kurds; after Basra, it has the second-largest oil fields in Iraq and is the backbone of the economy of the planned Kurdish state.

“We will not withdraw from one inch of this land for any reason and we are ready,” Kamal Kirkuki, a senior Kurdish leader and the commander of the Kurdish troops in western Kirkuk, told Arab News.

The federal government, he said was “not able to protect the people in the province and its facilities in the face of any future danger. We will not give up and will not allow them to return to our lands … this is out of the question.”

According to the statement issued by the Turkish General Staff, the incident happened in Zap region of northern Iraq when the PKK terrorists detonated handmade explosives.

Following the incident, Turkish forces launched air raids in the region and killed eight terrorists, it said.

Airstrikes on PKK targets in southeast Turkey and northern Iraq, where the terror group has its main base in the Qandil region near the Iranian border, have been carried out regularly since July 2015, when the PKK resumed its armed campaign.

The PKK -- listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the EU -- has been responsible for the deaths of more than 1,200 Turkish security personnel and civilians, including a number of women and children.

Four Turkish soldiers were killed in northern Iraq in two separate attacks blamed on Kurdish militants, the Turkish military said today. Five other soldiers were injured when two improvised explosive devices exploded yesterday in the Zap region of northern Iraq, not far from Turkey’s southeastern border. The army blamed a “separatist terrorist organisation” –Turkey’s official term for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) — for the blasts.

Clashes broke out immediately after the first of the attacks, the military said, as it reported it had killed 16 PKK members in air strikes in the past 24 hours. It was not possible to independently verify the toll. Since the PKK launched its insurgency in Turkey in 1984, over 40,000 people have been killed. The group is blacklisted as a terrorist organisation by Ankara, the United States and the European Union. After the collapse of a two-year ceasefire in 2015, Turkish military operations against the PKK intensified in southeastern Turkey.

BAGHDAD: Armed clashes broke out near Irbil, the capital of the Iraqi Kurdish region, on Tuesday. The fighting was between Kurdish forces and Iraqi security forces who were advancing to regain control of the last disputed areas adjacent to the Kurdish region.

At least three federal soldiers were killed and two others were injured, regional and federal military commanders told Arab News. In response to a controversial referendum held by the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) on independence, Iraqi federal security forces, backed by Shiite-dominated paramilitary troops, last week launched a military campaign to drive the Kurdish forces out of the northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk, its lucrative oil fields and the disputed areas adjacent to the 2003 regional borders.

Tuesday’s clashes took place in Al-Mahmoudiya, a small town near the Iraq-Syria border, when Kurdish troops blocked the way of Iraqi Urgent Response Division units moving from Zummar, northwestern Mosul, toward Habur to gain control of the border crossing and redeploy troops in the area.

“Peshmerga (the Kurdish troops) fear that we will get into Irbil so the clashes erupted here and there,” Falih Al-Khaza’ali, a military commander involved in the operation, told Arab News.

“Our goal is to impose federal authority on the disputed areas within the administrative borders of Nineveh province and to gain control of the border crossing, and this will be irreversible.”

The advance of federal troops to control the western areas of Nineveh and areas adjacent to the Syrian-Iraqi border is a part of preparatory steps to secure the area and establish a new crossing called “Avacoy.” This will be next to the Habur border crossing which lies 7 km inside the Kurdish region.

Khaza’ali and several other military federal commanders told Arab News that Baghdad had given a 24-hour time deadline to “peacefully” withdraw from the area and hand over the nearby Fishkhabour crossing.

Other clashes erupted in Makhmour, a town 65 km west of Irbil, when a Kurdish force attacked a checkpoint of federal police deployed in the area, wounded two policemen and took a further 13 as prisoners, local and federal military sources told Arab News.

Several video clips circulated on Tuesday on social media and they show dozens of Kurdish fighters driving Iraqi soldiers, two of them wounded, away from the checkpoint. The Iraqi flag was lowered and the Kurdish flag raised in its place.

“There was no attack carried out by Peshmerga. Federal forces confronted Peshmerga in Makhmour,” Lt. Gen. Jabar Yaour, the general secretary of the Peshmerga Ministry, told Arab News.

“Based on our information, federal troops intend to redeploy at the 2003 border between federal forces and Kurdish forces without coordinating or coming to an agreement (with KRG),” Yaour said. “Peshmerga troops are deployed there, so the problems developed.”

Local sources in Mosul said clashes took place in the Christian-dominated area of Til Assquf, northern Mosul. No casualties were reported.

Iraqi federal forces have achieved most of the campaign’s goals, but three districts in Makhmour town, several districts in Nineveh Plane, and Mahmoudiya, Sahaila, Qoush and Sheikhan towns on the Iraq-Syria border are still under the control of Kurdish forces.

“Baghdad mobilized its troops in order to take these areas, so the clashes happened,” Yaour said.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi in his weekly press conference on Tuesday said the resistance to Iraqi forces is aimed at protecting corruption and oil smuggling.

Kurd Parliament elections
Parliament in the Kurdish region decided on Tuesday to hold legislative elections in eight months after they were delayed amid tensions over disputed territory with the central government in Baghdad, AFP reported.

Simultaneous legislative and presidential elections in the Kurdish region had been due to take place on Nov. 1 but were delayed. There was no immediate word on a date for a new presidential election.

BAGHDAD: Iraqi forces are about to launch an offensive to recapture the last patch of Iraqi territory still in the hands of Daesh, the military said on Wednesday.

“Your security forces are now coming to liberate you,” said leaflets dropped by the Iraqi air force on the western border region of Al-Qaim and Rawa, according to a statement from the Joint Operations Command in Baghdad.

The militant group also holds parts of the Syrian side of the border, but the area under their control is shrinking as they retreat in the face of two sets of hostile forces — a US-backed, Kurdish-led coalition and Syrian government troops with foreign Shiite militias backed by Iran and Russia.

Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, who declared the caliphate from Mosul in mid-2014, released an audio recording on Sept. 28 that indicated he was alive, after several reports he had been killed. He urged his followers to keep up the fight despite setbacks.

“God is with us in this last assault on Daesh members,” said the leaflets dropped by the Iraqi forces on the border area with Syria.

“Tell those among your children and relatives who took up a weapon against the state to throw it aside immediately, and to go to any house on top of which a white flag have been raised when the liberation forces enter Al-Qaim.”